“I saw young Harry, with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm’d,
Rise from the ground like feather’d Mercury,
And vaulted with such ease into his seat,
As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.”
The railer Thersites (Troilus and Cressida, act ii. sc. 3, l. 9, vol. vi. p. 168) thus mentions our Hermes,—
“O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus, forget that thou art Jove the king of gods; and Mercury, lose all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus.”
And centering the good qualities of many into one, Hamlet (act iii. sc. 4, l. 55, vol. viii. p. 111) sums up to his mother the perfections of his murdered father,—